"I was serching on pricewatch for the HAPPAUAGE WIN TV PVR 250 MCE.I found www.buy.com on there so i wen't to their link where the product was.IT SAID IT WAS INSTOCK so i ordered it.Well AFTER 2 DAYS my order never arrived so i wen't online to check it out and one they said it was NOT instock (THEY LIED) 2 their PRICE was HIGHER than was advertized 3 the shipping was supposed to be FREE they tried to charge me 10 dollars & change for shipping.NEVER SHOP AT BUY.COM YOU WILL BE SORRY TRUST ME."
"Useless online store. I have placed 5 orders and 4 orders were cancelled. Smart buyers have no life there."
"I read the writeups here and almost didn't order from them, but the "deal" was too good to resist. I've now placed several orders with buy.com in the last 3 months using their free delivery. Every order has been delivered in less than 4 days and has been exactly as ordered.
No complaints here, but then I've never had to contact them about anything.
JohnW"
"I have been ordering from buy.com for a couple of years. Never had a problem. Only had to return an item once because I ordered the wrong thing. It was painless. I will keep coming back."
"On Oct. 09th, 2004, I purchased a Kingston Technology 512MB Compact Flash Card from Buy.com and I received my order after 12 days. After another 3 days, I found out that the price has been lowered down $3. And
I have filed a price match request to them.
Unfortunately, their service has performed very badly. At first, they denied my price match request and told me the reason is that I haved used a coupon on my previous order and I told them that the coupon is an apology coupon sent by them before and I could still take EVERY advantages I took on my previous order which means EVERYTHING is still the same except $3 difference. Then they send me another email said the reason of deny has been changed to that "Our Low Price Guarantee is
subject to certain restrictions. Price matches must be requested within 72 hours of placing an order." My reply is that I received my order 12 days after placing, how could I require a price match when I was not even sure whether I could receive it or not? Then I called them and Buy.com has changed the reason again! A CSR said it still because a price match cannot combine with a coupon promotion and this is written in their Low Price Guarantee Policy and my answer to that is I
know VERY CLEARLY of their policy and I just want to see ANY words mentioned in their policy to say that their Low Price Guarantee Policy is appliable to the price match to Buy.com itself because all I see is that their policy is only appliable to the Internet Retailer OTHER THAN Buy.com itself. That CSR has transferred my call to a supervisor and he was keeping telling me that their policy IS appliable to theirself and he just could not find ANY PROOF! At last, he said:" OK then, I am
telling you our Low Price Guarantee Policy NEVER appliable to our Buy.com self! And we could NEVER price match to ourself!"
How could a supervisor denied what he just said?! I told him:" I will file a complaint in Better Bussiness Bureau for your service." And he said: "Fine, OK, Good...". It seems like they really don't care about what's customers thinking about them and they really don't care any complaint at BBB. And I never met any company like them. I purchased my first item from Buy.com 4 years ago and right now I am very disappointed. Moreover, they have cancelled three of my orders without any notification and explaination before and I said nothing about it. But enough is enough! Now their CSR's attitude is so unacceptable.
I sent them several emails about this issue but they never replied me and on their weibsite, they said this very clearly:
"Your questions and concerns are important to us, and a Customer Care Agent will respond to your message as soon as possible." To my feeling, they are lying on every promise they made.
BTW, they are comparing every thing with Amazon.com and trying to show people they are better than Amazon.com. And I know that Amazon.com has 30 days period of price match to itself, therefore, I suppose Buy.com should at least has the same policy since they didn't mention that on their web site.
"
"Ordered 2 memory cards. Buy.com shipped 1. They are now taking weeks to investigate. In the meantime the rebate will run out. I'll never buy from them again. Going to file dispute with my Credit Card Company.
11/20/2004 Now been almost a month since the order. I have received 2 automated email responses from Buy.com saying my claim is being processed. In spite of emails from me and phone calls to their off-shore outsourced worthless New Dehli customer service center (***-***-****), I have received nothing.
NEVER BUY from BUY.COM. THEY ARE Incompetent baboons. "
"I ordered three items including two flash drives. One of the flash drives did not come in the packages I received. I have been emailing buy.com a half a dozen times in the last six weeks, and have yet to get any response that is more than a canned acknowledgment. Customer service for shipment mistakes is non-existent. I will never buy from this outfit again."
"EVERYBODY PLEASE LISTEN IF YOU CONSIDERING BUYING FROM THE MERCHANT BUY.COM.
Originally, buy.com was a venture started by Ingram Micro back in the early 90's. Ingram micro stunned the VAR (Value Added Reseller) market by selling merchandise that they normally sell wholesale to retailers to the general public. They employed a back-end system that checked other retailer’s prices online and made sure that their price always beat them.
In the early days, this was one of the best online merchants to buy from. Most items shipped and were delivered within 1-2 days. Everything was either in stock or reordered within a few days for shipment to the customer. They had a 1-800 # and great customer support.
TODAY ! ! !
This retailer is a total waste of your hard earned money.
I have heard many stories and see that their consumer rating is going down. Why?
They don’t answer emails in a timely fashion, items that are out of stock are not reordered in a timely fashion, and you basically can not communicate with anyone there.
Here are 2 stories from a friend of mine and my own.
1. My friend wanted to buy a hard drive based MP3 player for his father as a birthday present. With plenty of shipping time available, my friend ordered the product and was emailed by the system 2 days later that the item was no longer in stock. With a 2 week wait, there was no more communication. My friend emailed them asking when they were getting the product in, no response, 1, 2, and 3 times. Then he cancelled the order on their site and sent an email to confirm the cancellation, the birthday was now 2 days away. They waited 1 whole week to cancel his order as he was frustrated because he already paid another retailer for the same product and already received it. He was worried, since they don’t feel that they need to communicate, he would be charged and shipped the item even though he cancelled his order. They finally emailed him back with one of those corporate “your order is cancelled” emails 2 weeks later.
2. I received a “HOT BUYS” email from buy.com for a Lexar USB Jump Drive at an unbelievable (maybe too unbelievable price). I got the email and ordered the product from about 10 minutes of receiving the just distributed email. There was a $20 rebate from Lexar. This was October 11th 2004. On October 15th 2004, I received an email stating that the item was no longer in stock and is being reordered with no further information except a link to cancel my order. Lexar’s rebate ended on October 23rd , 2004 with a postmark grace period of 30 days. Today is November 6, 2004, I have been checking my account almost daily to see the “on order” statement shown every day. There is no phone number to contact this merchant, AT ALL, they want you to do all communication and cancellations online ONLY.
Today, I am canceling this order and will NEVER buy from this merchant again; something has happened there, new owners or something, I don’t know, but I felt compelled to write this review since I have had years of experience with this merchant and they have the gall to place a bizrate.com “customer certified” icon at the bottom of their pages showing a happy smiling face, which is a complete lie.
Of course, there are some happy customers and there are good transactions, but I detect a shift in their practices and wanted to warn you.
Sorry that this review was so long, but I really wanted to explain myself and let you know in detail the circumstances you might experience from a buy.com purchase.
Good luck.
J. Martin
PS: Flash forward to 2006/2007, seeing that buy.com wants its customers back with a flurry of holiday advertising where the owner is standing on top of the Buy.com building. I decided to try a few purchases from this retailer again. It seems that some of the complaints I mentioned above are slightly fixed. I received 3 orders placed on 3 different days in a reasonable amount of time.
If you are on Buy.com's email spam list and see a great deal, like some USB thumb drive for $5, you better respond to that email ASAP, those items go fast and if you wander around in their store with the item in your shopping cart for too long, it might dissapear due to stock. So this is a update to my slamming review of the past and giving some kudos back to buy.com, however, AS ALWAYS....SHOP AROUND!
"
"Ordered a Neuros MP3 player from Buy.com, only because they had them in stock and neurosaudio.com did not. What a mistake! The device crashed constantly and didn't work right from the first moment I got it. I applied for an RMA and asked for a credit. Customer service took a week to get back to me. When I wanted to change from a credit to a replacement, all I got was an autoresponder email. Customer service at Buy.com is nonexistent."
"Received quickly. Problem is not with ordering or delivery. Problem is with honoring their own sale prices. Ordered this 10/29...on 10/31 this SAME ITEM was deal of the day. Buy.com refused to cooperate with me on providing the price difference, or telling me they wouldn't. They just kept giving me the runaround."
"Ordered a Trendnet 2Port KVM switch on sale after rebate. Ordered on Oct 31st and arrived on November 5. Not bad considering I ordered on a Sunday, but it did seem to take a while to process and ship my order. An order I placed with another company on the 1rst was processed and shipped faster, and came a day earlier.
However, this is not a big deal, the product came in retail packaging and shrink wrapped and worked perfectly. I've never had a problem with Buy.com. "
"I've ordered several times from Buy.com, but this is the last. I've had to plead with "Customer Service" to get credit for an item I refused because the item was back ordered and I couldn't submitt the rebate. Even though I canceled the item online a week before it was shipped, it was still shipped. They refuse to pay return shipping on an item that was dependent on the back ordered item. "Customer Service" can only be contacted via email and responses are extremely slow for an online system. Buying from Buy.com is just too risky when other more reliable merchants are available."
"I ordered a Lexar 512 MB CF card in September and an empty envelope (with a shipping ticket) was wahat I received. I have complained three times and am getting nothing but an automated response."
"Easy to use site and excellent source for tough to find parts had my choices made in less than 5 minutes and another 5 minutes to complete the financial section. Order qualified for free shipping (Budget) and I totally expected to wait an entire 7 days as stated.I was totally surprised to receive all four items in perfect shape within 4 days.This was my first but not last purchase with Buy.com. Great job guys and I hope your ratings will improve a bit from a good review."
"THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE SUCKS. I EMAILED THEM MONDAY ABOUT WHY MY ITEM WAS STUCK IN NEW ORLEANS(10 MINUTES AWAY) SINCE LAST FRIDAY. THEY HAVE YET TO REPLY TO ME AND I DOUBT THEY WILL. AVOID AT ALLL COST!!!!!
IF YOU WANT A REPLY...SEND THEM A NASTY LETTER THEY WILL DEFINITELY REPLY TO YOU!"